From May to June

.

May is nearly over, and I haven't blogged in a while. It doesn't mean nothing is happening, it means I've been busy. Busy playing with Hannah and Sheena at the local beer festival (at the Rumburgh Buck), busy working and preparing for our biggest event of the year (#RedforRuth), and busy gardening!

Of all the busy things I do, gardening is the most calming. I have a lovely  polytunnel set up in my little veg area, and my greenhouse is full of young plants. I've claimed another bit of garden for another veg bed, and have had to put bamboo canes up to deter the plant nibbling peacock who visits regularly.

Percy peacock

Sheena loves cabbages so I am growing them in the polytunnel and in the veg bed under netting. We have so many beautiful butterflies (including white admiral whose caterpillars feed on the wild honeysuckle) and many of them rather fancy my brassicas! (And the older geration might just be saying 'Ooooh matron!' to themselves).

Watering is a very relaxing activity, as is deadheading. Weeding, not so much, but still necessary. We have one weed in our garden that just appeared this year in the lawn. The good folk of the Gardeners Question Time Facebook page assure me it is 'miner's lettuce' - an edible plant. But I won't be putting it on my salad - not with three dogs in the garden. I may try growing some elsewhere just for tasting purposes though.

My next big gardening project is reclaiming the borders at the dog training centre and putting in some plants that will thrive (given that dogs are everywhere, the border is in heavy shade, and it's not regularly watered). 

Meanwhile, I will continue gardening and feeding the birds. We have a cuckoo nearby, regularly hear the nightingale, and have blackcap, wrens and robins. The feeder is visited by greater spotted woodpecker, marsh, great, long and blue tits, goldfinch and chaffinch. And under the feeder - a couple of stock doves, wood pigeons, dunnock and Percy. 

I'm hoping we have lots of fresh produce from my efforts this, year. I will no doubt post pictures of cabbages and tomatoes in due course.

Liked this? Try...

• A walk on the wild side
• Ramsey Canyon
• Pond life

And now...

So it's been a month since my last post, two more chemos done, and the reduced dose/change in meds has made a huge difference. I am still really tired and have a number of side-effects, but progress is being made. Mostly, as it happens, in my garden.

One of the challenges of cancer, and the treatment regime, is the emotional toll it takes on you - not just the physical one. And being in my garden has been very good for me. Although I get very tired and sometimes run out of energy, I've managed to be outside (weather permitting) almost every day.

We've had a hot April with frosty nights so it's not been the usual gardener's calendar, but I've grown lots of plants from seed, and also (with help of course) converted a part of the garden into a mini-allotment where I have potatoes, peas and sweetcorn planted. When the frosts stop, my baby cabbages, sprouts and other veggies will go out there too. 

I do a little at a time, and rest a lot, but being in the fresh air and sunshine, and going for (short) walks with the dogs in the forest has helped my mental health as well as my ability to cope with the physical demands of cancer.

I've made some planters for some of the veg and flowers, and although they lack finesse, they certainly do the job. I do like working with wood and will, when I have time/energy, start to deconstruct some more pallets so we can  make more things for the garden.

The next stage medically is a scan and then a review to see if I am actually cancer free now (hopefully). They will then decide how many more chemos I need - I've had five, and could have up to twelve. But it will depend on the scan results and also the levels of my side-effects. There is a balance to be struck between the medical benefit and the chemical impact.

The reversal operation for my stoma will probably not be for quite a while - there is a huge backlog of operations for the NHS and tmy surgery is not a priority. That's OK - I can live with Ripley a bit longer. 

I want to get back to 'normal' (don't we all in these strange times),  I really want to get back to work, back to living the identity that doesn't have 'Cancer' stamped all over it. But in the meantime I am enjoying the wildlife in my garden, and the satisfaction of growing (and eventually eating) our own produce. 

Liked this? Try....

Pond life

Pond life

 In May 2020 it was lockdown - the sun was shining, I was on furlough, Sheena couldn't run her classes, and we had that most precious gift, time! OK, I was undergoing cancer treatment, but from May to July we had time to focus on our garden.

Our lawn was huge - a big expanse of grass with nothing to break it up. Would be great if we had lots of kids with footballs, but we don't. We thought about a border, and decided on a figure of 8 shape. Then we decided that one half of the 8 should be a pond. So at the beginning of May, we started out pond.

Once we had marked it out and marked our border and the pond area, we hired a digger. The result - after a lot of hard work - is our beautiful pond and accompanying border (full of home grown cosmos). We're delighted with the pond and spend our mornings eating breakfast on the bench, even when it's a bit chilly. Apart from it looking lovely, it is fascinating.

Apart from plants we bought from a garden centre, we were also given some grassy reed and 15 snails from a friend's pond. This grassy introduction proved extremely productive!

Although we wanted a wildlife pond, we put our three tank goldfish in the pond too - they deserved it! After just a few weeks the goldfish started to grow, and they are roughly double the size they were when we first introduced them. Not only that, we have two baby goldfish too!

Even with the fish, the pond attracts wildlife. The reed must have introduced some of the life in the pond, but we have:

• water boatmen - I love watching them but I've yet to hear them 'sing'
• pond skaters - they confused us! We had one and it died quite quickly, but within a week there were 20 mini skaters. And we've had several generations since
• great diving beetle - I was delighted to see this as I remember taking my son on a primary school trip to Fowlmere and them being so excited about finding one
• whirlygig beetles - these little guys zoom around the pond like little manic jewels
• dragonfiles - usually southern hawker, but also common darters, brown hawker and I'm sure I saw a golden ringed once! They are a delight, swooping over the pond and eating the gnats. We also have larvae in the pond too
• pond snails - brought to us from another pond, and they've settled in and had babies too
• toads - some large, some small! Frogs as well.

For a pond we only started in May, we're pretty pleased! Sitting by the pond is a great time waster - but it's a lovely way to relax and watch nature up close, in our own garden.

Sometimes you have to get a bit too close - for example when Sheena has to get the pond pump out so we can clean the filter. This does give you an idea of how deep the pond is, though. 

I will attempt to take some photos of the wildlife, but as soon as you get a camera out it's as if they know and do a rapid disappearing act! 

The pond also brings in other wildlife - for the first time ever in the forest we have had a hedgehog in the garden; I know we have a lizard living under the summer house, and with any luck we'll have newts as well in due course. There is a 'bog garden' at the edge of the pond which will no doubt harbour other life, and should be good for when the larva of the dragonflies hatch in the spring. The pond in winter is a delight yet to come.

Spending time by the pond is my favourite mindfulness passtime at the moment. There are things we could have done better in building the pond, but we're both pretty pleased with the way it looks, and most of all the wonderful wildlife that have chosen to make it home.

Liked this? Try...

• Field day
• A night on the brecks
• Ramsey Canyon

The Toad Charmer

Did you know the toad belongs to the anuran family? No, nor did I. But as these engaging creatures seem to be attracting my attention a lot recently, I thought I should look up a little more about them.

The common toad is not particularly rare, but less common than good old frogs! The natterjack toad, though, is not only rare but endangered. I have had three encouters with anurans recently (hey, isn't that a great name for an alien in Dr Who?). The first was a frog. (see my previous Frog Blog for more froggy tales and my own pictures.)

It was a rainy night a few weeks ago, I was walking back from the station along a main road. It was dark, drizzly and I was thoroughly fed up. Winter blues in full swing. Next to the pavement I was walking on was a wall, atop the wall an old metal railing fence. Behind the fence was a hedge, part of the garden of a house. I was looking down, keeping the rain out of my eyes, when I noticed something unusual. A huge frog! He was gorgeous - green and brown and shiny in the rain. But on a pavement next to a busy road he was likely to get squished - either by unnoticing pedestrians or, should he(she) venture the wrong direction, by unseeing traffic.

I stooped to pick him up and he scrambed towards the wall. I held him in my hand and he settled immediately (perhaps the warmth of my mammalian hands was actually rather nice to a cold frog). I lifted him to the top of the wall where the greenery poked through and the earth and safety beyond beckoned.

I held my hand flat on the wall. He turned, and instead of leaping off, just looked at me. "Go on" I said. I swear he winked, and then he hopped onto the wall, and then off into the undergrowth.

The other day, cycling back from the station (instead of walking in the rain), I came via the Heath and as I trundled over the earthy heap that separated the open paths of Therfield Heath from our road, I noticed that at the side of the path one of the brown leaves was the wrong shape. I swerved the bike so as not to squash the toad who, nicely camoflaged, had chosen a pedestrian pathway to sit upon.

I picked him up and gently set him down further in the leaves, off the main path, so that he should not get squished. Hopefully he took the hint and stayed clear of the cold tarmac. He didn't seem to object to me picking him up. Toads excrete a rather nasty substance from their skin making them unpalatable to most predators. Perhaps that's what gives them their confidence when being handled?

That was encounter number two. This morning, however, the toad came a-knocking at the door. Well, not literally, but pretty close. I opened the front door to head for the annual Thriplow Daffodil festival and there upon the doormat was a huge, swollen bellied toad. Yellow, brown and with bright eyes, it looked at me. And then continued as if to enter the house.

Now I know that yon toad would not have had such a warm welcome from other, more squeamish, members of the family, so I picked her up. Again, totally unconcerned at my touch (she didn't even puff herself up, as some do), she settled in my hand. The answer was obvious - I took her round to the back garden and set her down on the greenery next to the pond.

Toads return every year to the same pond if they can, I just hope ours was the pond she was heading for. I am sure we will be able to tell as our little pond fills up with skaters and other wiggly pond life, and -without doubt - it's annual quota of frogs and spawn. I'll keep my eye out for the strings of spawn which mean our garden toads have decided to bless us with their warty, pleasing presence once again.

Photo from BBC, more info on toads: http://www.herpetofauna.co.uk/common_toad.htm